pedaling backwards
by theotherthompson
Summary: James Sirius Potter spends his first Christmas away from his family at Hogwarts, but completely alone. For one, a few of his friends has stayed. For another, his dad is there too.


**AN:** QLFC Season 5 Round 8. Prompts were 'All I Want for Christmas is You' by Mariah Carey, bagel, and "You have his eyes." (Prompts 3, 4, and 12.) The headcanon that I received was the following:

[Beater 1, Nixor123, Wasps]-[After several years, Harry and Ron decided to come back to Hogwarts, and finally finish their seventh year. McGonagall allowed them after some consideration. Needless to say that it was a great embarrassment for their children.]

This is almost 2k, despite being literally 2 scenes. I don't know why I do this to myself. Anyway, I thought I was gonna do something humorous, but then it turned into a mix of fluff and serious stuff that I would like to call heart-warming? I don't know. All I do know is that somehow the lyrics to 'All I want for Christmas is You' somehow matched some of the themes underpinning this story, which is hilarious to me.

As a final note, the title comes from Bastille's 'Winter of Our Youth.'

Word count: 1,830

* * *

James Sirius Potter spends his first Christmas away from his family at Hogwarts, but not completely alone. For one, a few of his friends have stayed. For another, his dad is there too. Embarrassingly enough, his dad had decided to take his last year at Hogwarts at the _same time_ James began his first.

If that wasn't embarrassing enough, his dad does the typical dad stuff that should only happen through letters or in the summer _all the time_.

His dad is, objectively pretty cool. But it's lame when his dad sits down next to him at dinners and asks how his day was, and sometimes asks if James is being bullied too. It's lame when his dad tells him to eat his vegetables at meals. It's lame when his dad makes him do his homework on a Saturday. It's _super_ lame when his dad calls him pet names in front of James' friends.

It's lame now, except for a different reason than usual: his dad is escorting him down to the Hall for dinner at Hogwarts when they should be at _home_.

The entirety of Hogwarts has been decorated for Christmas. Walking through it is like walking through a shop's seasonal window display; everywhere James looks he can see tasteful snowflakes and mistletoe and baubles. It's nice, except for the fact that now there's fake snow all over the ground, which is annoying even though it's pretty.

James kicks the fake snow moodily. "Can't you floo us home? You're an adult and everything. McGonagall'd probably let you."

His dad snorts. "That's Headmistress to you!" he says, laughing, but he sobers quickly. "C'mon kid, you know that your mother's running a Quidditch training camp over the holidays, and your aunt already has her hands full with her kids and Albus and Lily. We can't, this year."

James pouts, grumbling. "But we always have Christmas dinner together," he mutters. He kicks the snow again, and then grimaces when some of it gets in his shoes.

Dad grins.

"Just wait until the Valentines, kid, it'll be ten times more annoying," he says, ruffling James' hair. James squawks, especially since he just brushed his bed head into some resemblance of order that morning.

"Dad!"

There's a snort further ahead. "I never thought I would see the day were you were a father," someone says, voice deep and wry.

They both look up to see who spoke, but there's no one there. James squints. "Was that a ghost?" he asks.

His dad shrugs. "Don't think so," he says, hands hanging loosely at his side. James recognises the stance as one he used often when they were out: feet apart and body loose, but tense enough to spring into action. Hand near his wand.

"You're as empty-headed as usual, Potter," the voice says, but there's still no one there. James looks up to his dad to find he's staring ahead, slightly to the right.

James follows that gaze and sees a man with dark hair and hooked nose looking back with a blank expression, dark eyes unreadable. The man shifts in his portrait. The painting of a sunny afternoon in a garden full of tiny, purple, bell-shaped flowers makes the man look entirely out of place in his completely black robes.

"Snape," Dad says, a faint smile that doesn't reach his eyes on his lips. It's not that he's upset to see the man, James thinks, but he can't tell much more than that.

Snape - Severus Snape, then, from his dad's stories - nods once, posture stiff and somehow distant. "Potter."

There's a moment where neither of them say anything, and then his Dad reaches to pull James to his side. "This is James Sirius Potter," he said. "My oldest. He has a younger brother and sister. Albus Severus Potter, and Lily Luna Potter."

Snape's expression changes slightly, a slight tightening around his eyes and a sag to his shoulder. "I'm sure I will see them in the coming years," he says, voice a bit rougher than before. Snape begins moving through the paintings, putting distance between them. "I need to find Albus. No doubt he's gone to talk to the Fat Lady again. Merry Christmas," he says, not looking at them.

Dad smiles again, and then blurts out quickly to Snape's retreating - figure? "Merry Christmas. And Snape?"

Snape pauses, just before he's out of sight, but doesn't turn around. His dad looks sad as he continues, "Thanks. For everything. I never got to say this to you before, but you're the reason why I - why _we're_ here today." His hand tightens on James' shoulder.

Snape finally turns. He looks Dad in the eyes, and then, startlingly, directly into James' eyes. "You have his eyes," he murmurs softly, then disappears.

His dad spends a long time quiet, after that, and only perks up again when the get to the Hall to see Uncle Ron brandishing bottles of butterbeer in both hands. He brushes off the whole thing like it never happened, but James doesn't forget.

* * *

James wakes up the Christmas morning of his first year at Hogwarts with a mixture of excitement and disappointment heavy in his stomach. He stays in his bed with his eyes closed for a long time, pretending to still be asleep. Downstairs in the Gryffindor common room, he can already hear the other students who have stayed behind shouting gleefully at each other.

"Hey, sweetheart," he hears over his head. "Merry Christmas! Do you want to go down for breakfast now or later?"

James groans. He finally opens his eyes and looks his father directly in the eyes, squinting. "No," he says petulantly. "I just wanna go home."

He smiles, sitting down next to James. "Aw, James, you know we can't."

James rolls over to his side, grumbling. "But I miss them," he mutters under his breath.

Dad chuckles, ignoring James' indignant gasp. "Oh, I'm going to miss this when you become a moody teenager," he says, petting James' hair. His hand automatically moves to smooth it down, which is a futile effort, but a habit his dad hasn't been able to break himself out of since James' has had hair.

"Dad," James whines. "Quit!"

He laughs. "C'mon," he says tugging James up so that he's seated in his bed. "You've got gifts to open! How about we open gifts now and after, if it isn't too embarrassing for you to sit with your dad, we can go down to the Hall and have some treacle tarts for breakfast."

James begins to smile. "Really?"

Dad hesitates and then, looking a bit guilty, says, "Don't tell your mother."

James gets a new sweater with a giant 'J' on it from the Weasleys along with a few books from his aunt, a practice snitch from his mum, and enough sweets from his friends to last him until the end of school. He ends up spreading out his gifts over his bed spread to inventory it all. His dad, displaced from his spot on the bed, sits on the floor next to James with a smile as he watches James carefully separate the sweets out by type.

"Where's Uncle Ron?" James thinks to ask once he's stashed away his sweets.

Dad grins. "Oh, he's in the common room. I think he's still fiddling around with the CD player his dad gave him." He pauses with a considering look on his face. A second later, the familiar strains of Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas is You' blasts through the walls, so loud James can feel the vibrations in his bed. It's followed by a couple of surprised shouts.

"On second thought, let's have breakfast here," Dad says. "Breakfast in bed! Isn't that fun?"

"HARRY!" Uncle Ron yells from downstairs. "WHAT'D YOU DO?!"

James squints at him, the way he sees his mum do when she thinks his dad's done something.

James never gets to eat meals in bed. Not after the pudding incident.

"Don't tell your mother," Dad says, and then calls for a house elf.

James decides to let it go, but only because he suddenly remembers the gift he made for his dad. He almost kicks the plate of bagels that appeared on his bed in his scramble to fetch the gift.

"Oh! I made something for you," James says, digging through his trunk. "I had to ask Professor Longbottom for help getting some it, you know? And I'm not good enough at Charms to do pictures yet so I had to ask Uncle Ron, but I glued everything myself!" He dumps his present onto his dad. "Do you like it?" he asks over Mariah Carey warbling about her wish coming true.

"' _CAUSE I JUST WANT YOU HERE TONIGHT,_ " Mariah sings in the background as his dad blinks dumbly at the scrapbook that James just dumped into his lap.

Dad smiles at him. "Thank you James," he says, but that isn't what James was waiting for.

"Open it!" James says, nudging him.

"Alright, alright!" Dad says, pushing James away gently. He looks down to the scrapbook. Opening it up reveals photos from Dad's own years at Hogwarts. Some are newspaper clippings, and others are from Colin Creevey during his time at Hogwarts, which took James some finagling to get. Copies of photos of Tonks, Remus and Teddy that from Aunt Andromeda are on one page. The following page has Dumbledore's chocolate frog card, and a snapshot of Sirius as Snuffles. Severus Snape stands still with a sneer on his face for his inauguration as Potions professor at Hogwarts in another photo. At least ten pages are dedicated to Mum, James, Albus, and Lily.

James watches as his dad flips through each page, until he reaches the last half of the scrapbook, where it's blank. He looks back up to James.

James shrugs bashfully. "I thought you might want to put in your own pictures," he says, gesturing to the blank pages., then looks away, down to his sock-clad feet. "I'm sorry that I kept whining. I missed Al and Lils and mum, but I forgot that you were missing people as well."

Dad smiles. His eyes look wet, like he's sad, but James doesn't think he looks _sad_. It's one of the looks his dad gets when he's remembering something that hurts, but it's a 'good hurt.' His mum had explained it to him last Halloween.

Dad carefully puts the scrapbook aside to tug James into a bone crushing hug. "It's the best gift I've ever gotten."

* * *

 **AN:** Fun fact, the flowers behind Snape was purple hyacinths. Their meaning is 'forgiveness.'


End file.
